#lots of children just don't like seeing kissing in general. especially involving family members. it's also possible that...idk they were

[musical-chick-13]

So I guess ultimately my question is why are we assuming that Nayuta specifically meant “Denji belongs to me definitively, and you are trying to take his attention away from me?”

Aside from the fact that narrative misdirection is a thing and that I think it would completely contradict all the themes of the story thus far to just have her be Makima 2.0 and inherently evil...

We don’t actually know if she and Yoru recognize each other or not? Even on a subconscious level. If she does recognize Yoru (and, reasonably, knows how her powers work) calling Yoru a thief could have meant that “You are trying to steal Denji’s spinal cord to make a weapon” or even “You have stolen this random girl’s body to use for yourself.” (Even if she doesn’t know specifically that Yoru is sharing Asa’s body, she might still be able to tell that something weird is going on?)

She’s still a child, she might have just impulsively said the smallest amount of words that would sort-of convey what she was feeling.

I’m not worried yet.

Yet.

[sage-nebula]

Ah thank you the first one (Genesis was actually what I was looking for) but it'd be super cool if you did write​ headcanons about it too! (If you don't mind that is)

No problem. :) Although, I do really hope you read Genesis, because I worked pretty hard on it and it’s the fic that I’m most proud of writing for the Pokémon fandom. It would be super cool if you read it. ^^ As for general headcanons (that, again, take place before Genesis does, given that Alan leaves the village in Genesis):

As mentioned in Genesis, Alan was discovered in the woods as an infant by the village’s florist, a young woman named Felicia. Felicia was in her early twenties; she had been going through the woods looking for wildflowers (she is, after all, a florist) when she found Alan abandoned on a rock. He was dressed and swaddled in a blanket, but she didn’t see anyone else nearby, and didn’t have it in her to just leave him there, so she took him back to Isolé right away. (It should be noted that he was abandoned purposefully close to the village. His biological mother was hoping that someone would find him.)The thing is, Isolé Village is a very small little village. Everyone knows everyone, and so everyone knew Felicia, knew that she didn’t even have a boyfriend (much less a husband), and so the sight of her walking through the village with a baby was not too well received. She attracted attention, and a small crowd trailing her as she went straight to Mayor Gosselin’s house, because even though she felt that she couldn’t just leave the baby in the woods, that doesn’t mean that she knew what to do with him. It was obvious that she hadn’t given birth to the baby herself, of course (everyone knew her and knew that she hadn’t been pregnant), but some of the more superstitious members of the village wondered if there was some kind of magic involved. As mentioned in Genesis, even five years later Maurice still thinks Alan is probably a changeling.Either way, once the mayor was notified, they had to make a decision on what to do. Everyone agreed (well, most people agreed) that they couldn’t chuck the infant back into the woods. However, there was also no one there who wanted to adopt him (including Felicia, who felt that she was too young and this was too sudden, even as Maurice said that she shouldn’t have brought the little changeling back with her then, now should she have?). Mayor Gosselin made an executive decision then and there that everyone would raise him, then, everyone taking a turn with each new month. No one was happy about this, but what else could she do? It was the only fair choice to make.Since Felicia was the one who found him, she was the one who named him (since she had no idea what name he was originally given by his biological parents). The name Alan can have several different meanings, among them “harmony,” “little rock,” “noble,” or “fair; handsome.” Felicia chose it because she hoped that he would not disrupt the harmony of the village, but also because she found him on a rock in the woods, and therefore felt it fitting.

As mentioned, none of the villagers had wanted to take Alan in. They either already had children of their own, didn’t want to have children of their own, or otherwise were just not open to the idea of raising a child. Nonetheless, they had to, and for this reason Alan was seen as a burden. Some of the villagers, such as Maurice, had some superstition or prejudice to back their dislike. But even without that, Alan was still seen as an extra burden none of them had asked for, and so it really didn’t matter what he did or didn’t do as he grew up; every little thing he did that was “wrong” was perceived as a major slight that caused them grief, whereas the things he did “right” were expected of him and nothing to be really praised or congratulated. (In other words: “You cause enough trouble just by being here, you better be on your best behavior.”)He was an unwanted child from the start, and he quickly came to realize it.

As you know, Maurice often referred to Alan as a changeling and, at least to some degree, genuinely believed that. As a whole (and as mentioned in Genesis), the village disparagingly compared Alan to an absol, feeling that he was a bad omen and brought disaster upon them time and again.

As mentioned, there were other children in the village---children who were born into families that, to put it bluntly, actually wanted them. Children don’t have inherent prejudices from the start and Alan didn’t really do anything to earn their ire (any more than any other children would), but children do learn the prejudices of their parents, can pick up on when their parents do or don’t like someone, and can at times be cruel and find fun in bullying. Alan was a convenient target, and a very alluring bully magnet as far as the other children in the village were concerned, because:- He didn’t have parents, and wasn’t a part of anyone’s family, so it wasn’t like he had anyone to go tattle on them to.- None of the adults liked him. Since none of the adults liked him, if the kids pushed or hit him, the adults would often act like they didn’t notice (or else half-heartedly tell them to stop). On the other hand, if he pushed or hit them back, he would be punished pretty much immediately, since none of the adults liked it when their kids were bullied.- Since none of the adults liked Alan, and felt that he did nothing but cause trouble and bring disaster (“little absol”), it made Alan a convenient scapegoat for the other children. Particularly if Alan was around, if the other kids did something wrong, they could just blame it on Alan, and he would be punished for it nine times out of ten. It didn’t matter if he was actually involved or not; the adults were far more likely to believe he did something wrong, especially if it was someone’s own child telling them that Alan was the one who did the bad thing. And as a specific example, there’s a point in Genesis when the mayor tells Augustine that she walked in on Alan and her son eating cookies from a broken cookie jar on the floor. Alan, in his first (and last) instance of speaking openly, told her honestly that a bunnelby had knocked the jar on the floor. She didn’t believe him, and he was punished. And I want to emphasize that: He got in trouble for breaking the cookie jar. The mayor’s son? He was just told “don’t eat cookies before dinner, you know that’s not right” and let off the hook. It was pretty disproportionate, but the mayor would feel justified and say that Alan had clearly lied, had roped her son into it, and all sorts of other nonsense. The kids of the village picked up on this, recognized him for the scapegoat he was, and took advantage.(And note: In canon we see that Alan has a tendency to take the blame for literally everything on his shoulders, even if someone else is clearly at fault. While canonically we only have the abuse he suffered under Lysandre to look to as a reason for this---and while I wholeheartedly believe that Lysandre’s abuse absolutely compounded the C-PTSD we see Alan exhibit in canon---I also look to the headcanons I have about his early childhood to explain it as well. Things like this---being blamed time and again for things that were either accidents or not his fault at all---certainly helped contribute to the guilt / shame complex we see in canon, where he earnestly believes that everything is his fault even if it isn’t. If nothing else, look at it this way: Early childhood laid the foundation. Sycamore helped ease a lot of that and helped Alan heal . . . only for Lysandre to bring everything surging back to the forefront so that it could crash down all over again.)As a final note on the other kids, there were times (when the adults weren’t around) that some of them might have tried to play a little bit with him, if they had no one else to play with, or were bored. But for the most part they just saw him as a fun bullying target, believed that he was just as bad and unlikable as all the adults showed them, and if asked about him in present day times, would probably remember him as “that freak” because that’s how they always thought of him. They might have been kids, but they weren’t kind. They weren’t taught to be. (And while you could ask, “Shouldn’t they change their opinion as they grow?” what reason do they have to do that? He left when he was five. They only know what they remember, and perhaps what others say when he’s brought up. If anything, he’s a joke to them. A memory to laugh at. They have no reason to think of him as the person he grows to be; he only exists as the boy in their memories, and those memories aren’t good.)

Physical contact wasn’t something positive for Alan. Once he learned to walk, he was never picked up and carried around---and before that, he was only carried when they explicitly needed to move him somewhere. No hugs, no hair ruffles, no kisses---none of that. Positive physical contact was something he wanted, because he gathered from watching other kids that it was something that signified love and family, but it wasn’t something he ever got.Not until the day Augustine found him in the mountains, anyway.

Much of the abuse Alan suffered during this time period was in the form of neglect. As can be gathered by how Alan meets Sycamore in Genesis, the villagers often ignored him unless he needed to be punished for something. This is what gave him the mindset that he could wander off whenever and wherever he wanted, something he often did because being alone was more pleasant than being around the others (however much he tried his best to be good enough for someone to want to keep). But that said, there was plenty of verbal and emotional abuse to go around as well---many reminders that he was a bad child who did bad things and caused trouble for everyone. Many reminders that he wasn’t good like the other children. Many reminders that he was a nuisance at best and a curse at worst. Many blatant reminders that he was not wanted nor needed where he was. The opposite, really.There was some physical abuse, too, depending on who he was staying with that month and what it was that it was perceived he did. Maurice very often threw him into the hall closet for “Time Out” (i.e. to get him out of the way for a while). Usually Maurice would let him out after an hour or so, but sometimes he’d forget and Alan would be in there all night (except for when he sneaked out after Maurice and his wife went to bed to try and get some food from the kitchen, or use the bathroom or something). More than once it was only discovered when the closet door was opened the next morning because Maurice or his wife needed something, and there was at least one time when Maurice was actually angry that Alan was in the way again before his wife had reminded him, “You did put him there.” Alan at least wasn’t punished for that, but he was told to get the hell out of the closet and out of the way, at which point he scampered off to go stand awkwardly in the kitchen because he didn’t know what else to do. (Maurice’s wife gave him an orange---a whole orange, for four-year-old---and told him to go outside and have breakfast. Alan ended up puncturing it on a rock in the mountains. He still got some of the fruit out of it, but it was messy and sticky and got everywhere, which neither Maurice nor his wife were very pleased about when he came home later.)I should note that, had Augustine listened to Fulbert and left Alan there, Maurice most definitely would have tossed Alan in the closet when they got home, especially since (as witnessed in the fic) he very quickly jumped to the conclusion that Alan was at fault for the houndour incident, which infuriated him on top of already being upset that it was his month to look after Alan to begin with.

All the children in the village were home-schooled, but Alan’s education was largely ignored, save for what he picked up on himself. He would join the lessons of whatever house he was staying at that month (with varying degrees of success; sometimes the adults let him sit in and learn, other times they treated him like he was disturbing the lesson), but mostly he patched together things on his own. For instance, Alan taught himself how to write; he picked up pencils in a tight fist and tried to figure out the best way to draw letters from workbooks entirely on his own. This is one reason why he has a very loose grasp on capitals when Augustine finds him, as well as why some of his letters look weird. He didn’t know the right way to write them, he just tried his best based on what they looked like. His spelling was also bad, and while he could sound out words to try and read them, his reading was still shaky even if he could read some things. 

Out of everyone, Felicia was probably the nicest to him, given that she felt some degree of responsibility because she was the one who brought him back in the first place. But even then, she would sometimes ask him things like, “Why did you have to be in the forest that day?” and “Why did I have to find you?” Alan, being a child, had no answer for her. Neither of them were happy about this.