#maybe ill make more encanto content idk

[avianurges]

Cover for the second book of Self Aware ! 

anyways send me theories you have based off this cover alone [eye emoji]

Also here’s a tiktok of it

[anchoviesinthenightsky]

Another aspect to the Bruno abandoning thing, I don’t think anybody’s talked about this kind of headcanon, but what if Alberto’s dad was just…not mentally okay? Not giving it an excuse but hear me out. Most of the fandom if not all have decreed that he abandoned Alberto and said he’s “old enough to fend for himself” as hostile and more of Alberto being a burden in his eyes, but, maybe also from growing up with a mentally ill parent, maybe Alberto’s dad had swings of bad health and would disappear, because he couldn’t handle things himself and thought it would be better to leave Beto alone, though eventually coming back, before he thought Alberto would’ve been big enough to handle it. My mom use to be kinda the same way, coming back and forth because she thought it’d be better for her to disappear during her bad spills because she thought it was better than me dealing with her illness, which is a double sword in of itself. His comment of changing his mind, maybe he tried to leave before or use to threaten to leave but his mind would change coz of him being so young. Emotional abuse (as that’s probably as far as we’re keeping it in how Alberto and Bruno’s relationship was) is a double edged sword, especially depending on its context and contents.

I think, outside of it just being a personal headcanon (lmao sorry), it’s just, a different way to look at it. Sure there’s parents who just abandon their kids as soon as possible, but idk, thoughts? I’m also sorry if it’s too personal in relation I just, figured it’d be a interesting talking point to it yaknow?

I love hearing personal head cannons! Thank you so much for sharing it!

I think a lot of the fandom interpretations of Bruno (Alberto's dad) do end up being a little flat and one sided, sort of just seeing him as this evil guy who does nothing outside of abandon Alberto. And I honestly think that's a fair reading because that's what we get from the movie. The only person who tells us anything about Bruno is Alberto, when he's in a really low emotional state. (He outs himself, Giulia rejects him, and Luca betrays him. Clearly it stirs up other shit that he's been repressing, most notably being abandoned.) So what we get of Bruno is this really flat, one dimensional picture from the incredibly upset (and slightly unreliable) narrator of Alberto. This, uh, is not very related to your ask, but I felt the need to mention it.

Anyway, moving into hc's and building Bruno into more of a fleshed out character-- I think something like this makes a lot of sense. I recently watched Encanto (like everyone else it seems, but spoilers ahead for those who haven't seen it yet), and one of the discussions I've been seeing about it re:generational trauma is the way that the trauma gets passed down through generations. Like, you Alma, who has lost her home and husband and becomes a single mother, use the gift of the miracle to build and protect her home and community above anything else. Then we see Julieta (Mirabel's mom) continue that same idea in a different form-- where she prioritizes the community's health over herself, putting a lot of time and labor into healing others. Then you see similar pattern in Luisa and Isabela, who both prioritize other's needs above their own. Anyway, this is a long winded way of saying that I agree with you. The way that our parents think about themselves (especially the negative ways), can easily become of the negative ways their children think about themselves.

So Alberto's thoughts of "other people would be better off without me" may likely of come from his father believing that about himself as well. That, for whatever reason, Alberto would be better off without him there. (And your headcannon of maybe that being influenced by a mental illness could work really well, as could just a general feeling of uselessness or something that happened to Bruno in his life.) Obviously the idea of "other people are better off without me" is always incorrect, and it certainly doesn't justify Bruno leaving. But it does give this sort of sympathetic side to his character that rounds him out a bit!